Unemployed Men, Good Life and Social Exclusion
Journal Title: KultŁ«ra ir visuomenė. SocialiniŁ³ tyrimŁ³ Ł¾urnalas - Year 2014, Vol 5, Issue 2
Abstract
Analyzing 18 semi-structured interviews with 23–39-year-old unemployed men, the article focuses on the relation between social exclusion and quality of life or “good life.” It attempts to answer the question to what degree these men’s conceptualizations of “good life” and their unemployment status are a symptom of social exclusion that, in this article, is considered as both a process and state in which individuals are deprived of a minimum standard of the quality of life. Apart from several respondents living in the countryside and involved in occasional illegal low-wage jobs, most unemployed men do not experience poverty as one of the indicators of social exclusion. The loss of a job for them means not a material deprivation but rather unrealized visions of their lives, complex strategies of survival and negative affects and emotions. The author argues that to some extent the respondents are socially excluded on affective and emotional level because unemployment intensifies the feelings of insecurity and shame, psychological discomfort, self-doubt, and the lack of respect and respectability. Therefore, most of them experience themselves as subjects with negative capital. On the other hand, most respondents remain attached to a normative vision of good life based on a well-paid job, partnership/family, privately owned apartment/house and satisfactory consumption. In their opinion, these objects of good life enable them not only to live well but also to flourish. However, the interviews demonstrate that their vision of good life appears rather fragile: most men have a difficulty imagining their future, yet they do not cease to believe that their misfortunes are merely an exception and not a recurrent pattern in the socially approved and widely accepted genres of good life.
Authors and Affiliations
Artūras Tereškinas
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP121944
- DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.7220/2335-8777.5.2.3
- Views 72
- Downloads 0
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